One of the author's enduring concerns about the concept of academic freedom is with semantics. It has seemed to him that one of the biggest difficulties with discussions of academic freedom (as with many conversations about "value-laden" terms such as "democracy," "equity," and "justice") is that people begin from different positions and with…

Plaut and McClelland (2010) and Quian Quiroga and Kreiman both challenged my characterization of localist and distributed representations. They also challenged the biological plausibility of grandmother cells on conceptual and empirical grounds. This reply addresses these issues in turn. The premise of my argument is that grandmother cells in…

This study investigated children's understanding of unfamiliar noun and verb definitions in tasks that were manipulated for syntactic and semantic properties of definitions. The study was also designed to examine the relation between understanding word definitions and the skills of syntactic awareness and making inferences. A total of 117 children…

"Accountability" is widely used in discussions about what should be happening in school, but it is not an appropriate guiding concept for assessments designed to improve teaching and learning. This article examines discussions about assessment for internal and external purposes; it then outlines an alternative frame for assessment that has…

In the following pages, we examine some common methodological challenges in educational technology research and highlight new data collection approaches using examples from the literature and our own work. Given that surveys and questionnaires remain widespread and dominant tools across nearly all studies of educational technology, we first…

This article examines the case of an adult reader who has developed literacy practices that represent a wide range of authentic, personally and professionally motivated purposes for reading and writing. Despite this wide range of literacy practices, however, and despite the opportunities they have opened for him, Joseph (his chosen pseudonym)…

Objectives: This article presents a systematic review of the literature on evaluative studies of truancy interventions. Method: Included studies evaluating truancy interventions appearing in peer-reviewed academic journals from 1990 to 2007. Findings: In total, 16 studies were assessed. Eight studies used group comparison designs and eight studies…

Postmodern and deconstructionist approaches are necessarily concerned with "making visible" and working with marginalized "others". This article explores how theory as method might enable us to revisit methodological approaches that have conventionally relied upon semantic readings of the text. Deconstruction clears the way for such approaches…

In German music education, the term "community music" is almost unknown. There could be various reasons for this fact such as a lack of community music activities in Germany, terminological problems concerning the German translation, or an appropriate explanation of the term "community music." This paper will discuss some of…

Assessment for learning is increasingly part of accepted orthodoxy, with massive government funding in England, is central to national assessment in Wales, and an export to the USA. Black et al.'s Assessment for learning: Putting it into practice (2003), the "bible"' of assessment for learning, is set reading for trainee teachers across…

This paper offers a different approach to writing about oneself--Stanley Cavell's idea of philosophy as autobiography. In Cavell's understanding, the acknowledgement of the partiality of the self is an essential condition for achieving the universal. In the apparently paradoxical combination of the "philosophical" (which is traditionally connected…

This theoretical review addresses the construct of beliefs in education and English as a foreign language, and their impact when integrating technology. A thorough definition and categorization of teachers' beliefs will be provided. In addition, studies conducted in various educational settings examining the effects of teachers' beliefs and the…

The Common Core of Data (CCD) nonfiscal surveys consist of data submitted annually to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) by state education agencies (SEAs) in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the four U.S. Island Areas (American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin…

This article examines teacher leader role development and definition by looking at one emergent model of distributed leadership: the hybrid teacher leader (HTL). HTLs are teachers whose official schedule includes both teaching K-12 students and leading teachers in some capacity. Participants included six HTLs across four school districts over 2…

Board policy provides that in the fall of every even-numbered year, the Chancellor's Office shall compile a System report on faculty workloads at the Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE) institutions. Faculty workload is collected from the campuses in two parts: (1) in-class instructional data originating from workload databases and validated…